Lucas: A Life Changing Love

By Adam Lucas

I will never, ever forget the crowd at the Dean E. Smith Center on the night Roy Williams was hired by North Carolina on April 14, 2003.

Remember where we were then. Remember that it had been over a decade since a national championship, a decade since the Tar Heels had won the ACC outright, and that Duke had won seven of the last eight games in the series—including Carolina defeats by 26, 29 and 25 points.

Remember that reporters had made a habit of camping in the Smith Center parking lot to attempt to interview unhappy players, that barely enough alums returned to put together a full-court summer pickup game with the current team, that there were multiple players—core players, players you think of as some of your all-time favorite Tar Heels—who were considering leaving Chapel Hill.

And here came Roy Williams. He arrived that night in a car driven by Dean Smith. A crowd had gathered at the Smith Center. There was so much uncertainty around Carolina Basketball in those days that people just wanted to see it for themselves. It was largely students, of course, but there were also normal fans, just longtime Tar Heels who wanted to be there to witness whatever was about to happen.

Every car that approached Skipper Bowles Drive was greeted with anticipation, and then subsequent disappointment. It was just a mere mortal. Then came the car with Smith and Williams. Grown men shrieked. The crowd chanted Roy Williams' name. It was as if the members of One Direction—uh, sorry, Coach—it was as if the members of the Beatles had arrived.

Here was the man who had come to save Carolina Basketball! Here was the coach who would lead the Tar Heels back to prominence! One of the most important programs in all of college sports—and a way of life for so many of us—would be restored to its rightful status!

And here's the thing: it was so much better than that. Way better.

We didn't know that we were about to live the best era in Carolina Basketball history. Think about that. On the night that car arrived at the Smith Center, the Tar Heels had won three NCAA championships out of the 65 tournaments that had been played.

We were about to watch Carolina win three of the next 14.

We had no idea on that April night how good we would have it for the next nearly two decades. Imagine if you'd told us on that evening that over the next 18 years, we'd get to see Marvin's tip-in, and Sean May dominate, and Tyler Hansbrough break records, and Kendall Marshall throw passes, and Marcus Paige at PNC Arena, and Luke Maye against Kentucky, and redemption.

And those were just the wins. They are indelible and they are cherished and they are essential to the national perception of the program.

But if you ask me about these last 18 years, I'm not sure that I wouldn't first remember some other scenes. "Don't even worry, we're going to make it." Jumping off the frat house. Danny Green dancing. Theo Pinson crashing another press conference. Deon Thompson showing off his Roy Williams leg tattoo. Special Olympics clinics. Fast Break Against Cancer breakfasts. Luke Maye getting a standing ovation in class the morning after the Kentucky game. Pickup games with NBA veterans teaching college freshmen, and then grabbing dinner afterward.

Those who have been in sports can tell you that it is, in fact, possible to win big without it being much fun. Not these 18 years. These 18 years were so much fun. The players and the coaches and the staff members, all of them, made it better than we had any idea it might be, and it all started and ended with Roy Williams.

And I'm going to tell you something a little embarrassing: thinking about it makes me sad. There are tears in my eyes right now because these were some of the very best times in my life and I didn't miss them until right this exact moment because I was too worried about what might happen next.

The times you think will never end—man, those are the ones that end too fast. My kids have never been aware of Carolina Basketball with any coach other than Roy Williams. They think it is just automatically supposed to always be like this, and I know it isn't.

But as sad and uncertain as it is for the rest of us, it is so happy for Roy and Wanda Williams. They lived and breathed and represented Carolina every single moment of the last 18 years. There wasn't a second that he wasn't thinking about what was best for the Tar Heels first. That's going to be very, very difficult to replace. That would be the case in any University job, even more so in a head basketball coach.

Just last week, at Boshamer Stadium, there was Roy Williams, masked up, in the stands watching the Diamond Heels. Carolina has four number-one ranked spring sports nationally right now, and do you know who helped make that possible? Roy and Wanda Williams, who funded the scholarships for all of last year's seniors who wanted to return and have a "real" senior year in 2021.

Attending college at the University of North Carolina dramatically changed Roy Williams' life. And every day for the last 18 years, he's tried to make sure everyone else who came through Chapel Hill had that same life-changing experience. There will be someone else orchestrating defenses and drawing up offensive sets and—come on, we can laugh a little, can't we?—calling timeouts on the sideline next year.

They will win games. Lose some, too, probably. But finding someone who loves Carolina like Roy Williams, well, that's going to be tough. This is the kind of story that seems unbelievable. This is a kid from the mountains who came to Chapel Hill with $100 his mother had given him—the money wasn't for the fall semester or his freshman year, it was for his entire four years at Carolina—and left with his name on the court and a Hall of Fame career. Because Roy Williams went to school at Carolina instead of Georgia Tech, we got to celebrate on Franklin Street and maybe travel to St. Louis or Detroit or Phoenix and text our Duke friends after another Tar Heel win and hug strangers at the Smith Center and arrange family events around basketball schedules. Whether we never met him or knew him well, his path changed our lives. It seems a little silly now to look back at 2003 and think that we believed we were just getting a basketball coach.

He kissed midcourt after the win over Duke in the regular season finale this year, and maybe then we suspected.

Part of Williams' love for Carolina was knowing when it was time to come home. And maybe a tiny little bit of it is knowing when it's time to leave, too. Because of the world we're living in right now, we can't have a crowd at the Smith Center to send him off the same way that we welcomed him in 2003. But if we did, they'd be screaming the exact same thing they were 18 years ago: We love you, Roy.

Oh, and one more thing, something that we haven't said nearly enough and something we'll likely feel even more strongly in the days and weeks and months and years to come as we think back on how incredible this entire experience has been: thank you.

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